They came by the thousands Saturday to the AIDS Memorial Quilt at UCLA's Pauley Pavilion to bid farewell and celebrate the lives of friends, lovers, relatives and strangers killed by the disease. "This is part of the healing process for our family," said Connie Searcy of Redondo Beach as she pointed out the 3-by-6-foot panel she and her husband created to honor the memory of her son, Steve Holzman, who died last year at the age of 26.

The colorful panels stretched out across the floor, each a deeply personal tribute to a life ended prematurely. Some showed symbols of hope--a sun, a heart, a peace sign. Others displayed photographs and handwritten messages. All had names. The AIDS Memorial Quilt came back to Cal State Northridge on Thursday. "It's breathtaking," said Pat Gould, whose nephew, Larry DeGrange, died of AIDS in 1992.

The AIDS quilt, now more than four times larger than when it was first unveiled a year ago, completed a national tour in Washington on Saturday. The 8,288 panels, spread across the Ellipse near the White House, offered brightly colored tributes to individual victims of the deadly disease. "It's a beautiful thing, but it's built on corpses," said Cleve Jones, who conceived the quilt project after a friend died of AIDS in 1986.

The name of a Los Angeles Police Department officer who died of AIDS in 1990 will be added to the AIDS Memorial Quilt, the first of more than 24,000 quilt panels to bear the name of a Southern California law enforcement officer. Saying that one of Christopher Carlee's last requests was to be included in the quilt, Sgt. Mitchell Grobeson presented the panel Thursday to the local chapter of the national NAMES Project, which oversees the quilt that displays names of people who have died of AIDS.

The Los Angeles premiere of the HBO-sponsored documentary "Common Threads: Stories From the Quilt" was not a festive occasion. Word of the nature and intensity of the 75-minute film had already reached Los Angeles. The film presents personal accounts of the making of the AIDS quilt, and the more than 400 guests at the pre-screening cocktail reception at the Directors Guild theater anticipated a jolting experience.

Imagine a quilt so large that if it were lifted into the sky, it would create an artificial eclipse. That's exactly what South Coast Repertory literary manager John Glore does in his short play "Shadow," which will be given a staged reading tonight in Newport Beach. That eclipse, and the resulting darkness it casts across the face of the Earth, is a metaphor, of course--in this case, for the shadow that AIDS has left, and continues to leave, in its wake.

Pauley Pavilion at UCLA was transformed into a cathedral of love and remembrance Friday night as the sprawling Names Project AIDS Quilt celebrating the lives of Americans killed in the epidemic was unfurled at a somber and uplifting ceremony. The event, delayed when a power blackout hit the pavilion Thursday night, marked the start of a 20-city tour that organizers hope will raise $2 million for local AIDS services organizations.

There were 1,920 AIDS victims represented by the Names Project quilt when it was laid out in Washington on Oct. 11, 1987. Almost exactly a year later, the number is 9,000 and growing. Because the quilt already covers the equivalent of eight football fields, this weekend's display on the White House Ellipse is likely to be the last time it is shown in its entirety, project spokeswoman Sue Baelen said.

Sometimes you can make a point by being amused at the absurdity of it all. Sometimes you can satirize. Sometimes you can try to be clever or literary or passionate. And sometimes you just get mad. Last Sunday, I just got mad. On that day, I went to the UC Irvine Student Center to see the AIDS Memorial Quilt. It was being exhibited there in connection with the Orange County gay-pride festival.